Peter Pig 15mm M113 ACAV

The single most successful military vehicle ever built, the M113 is, like the Huey helicopter, inextricably linked with the Vietnam War. In developing an Armored Cavalry Platoon for use with Incoming! it was necessary for me to purchase six of these vehicles. Having already decided to use Peter Pig miniatures for my collection and having been very pleased with the quality, I naturally decided to stick with this manufacturer for the purchase.

As always with Peter Pig, you get good value for money. The kit comes in seven parts;

• Hull
• Left and right running gear
• Driver
• M60 machine gunners (x2)
• FMC gunshield/turret (with commander and .50-cal machine gun)

The model is, on the whole, cleanly cast. There is however a clear and conspicuous mold line running down the side of the hull and you are well advised to clean this up as it will be quite apparent if you simply paint directly over it. Apart from that small defect, all the other components require minimal preparation.

Assembly

After having carried out all the necessary preparations, I assembled the model using a contact adhesive. As always, I assembled the model in a 'dry run' before sticking anything together just to make sure that everything fitted the way it should.

The FMC turret fits snugly into the hole in the top deck and turns in place with minimal effort - however, it will fall out if the model is tipped upside down.

I chose to glue the vehicle driver in place since this is a very small component, easily lost, and since to all intents and purposes only his helmeted head is visible it will be quite easy to paint him in place.

The rear M-60 gunners, placed in the open crew compartment are designed simply to 'lean' against each other back-to-back in order to prevent them falling down inside the hull. Personally I did not find this to be a satisfactory arrangement. The hull itself is hollow and although the M-60 gunners are molded as complete figures (even though when in place you can only see them from the waist up) there is no standing platform or anything else to stand them on. As a consequence they have a tendency not to sit properly. I solved this problem by simply inserting and gluing in place a piece of card inside the hull flush with the top of the running gear. This is, by a stroke of luck, the exact depth required to allow the M-60 gunners to stand correctly without having to support each other. Note that this piece of card was glued in place before I added the running gear.

Painting the Vehicle

At this early stage I broke the model down into several parts for painting. The assembled hull with the driver in place was the main component whilst the commanders turret and the M-60 gunners were all separate. The gunners would be glued in place when they were finished, and the commanders turret would be attached without using glue in order to allow it to freely rotate.

I undercoated the various parts of the model with a black acrylic spray primer taking care to make sure that the spaces between the road wheels were completely covered. It took several light applications of primer to achieve this and you are far better off applying a number of consecutive light coats rather than a single heavy spraying since spray primer does tend to pool and run if applied to heavily - not to mention the fact that it can quite literally cover over some of the detail of the model if applied too thickly.

Having achieved an even undercoat of black I then applied a base coat of Color Party 'Olive Drab' using a make-up sponge to apply the paint. This technique, described in detail elsewhere (see 'Painting the Hull'), produces a result very similar to that achieved using an air brush and is the technique that I use for all my vehicles and helicopters, irrespective of scale.

When using this technique I tend to work the sponge face along the angled lines of the hull gradually building up a deeper shade of the color on these edges whilst achieving what looks like a 'feathered' effect on the adjacent areas were the sponge face 'wraps' around the angled edge each time you strike it. I use the whole face of the sponge to paint the top deck, front and rear surfaces relying on the depth of the molded detail on the model to create naturally shadowed recesses. When painting the commanders turret I only used the sponge face to strike the turret from above and in this way the underside of the turret remains in shadow.

This whole technique is dependent upon the application of successive light coats of paint and is in some respects similar to drybrushing in that you slowly build up the color.

Once the base coat was dry (this takes only a couple of minutes using acrylics since the paint is applied so thinly and is not mixed with water) I then applied a single highlight. The highlight is a mixture of the olive drab basecoat and yellow. Avoid using white as the mixing color for the highlight as this produces a totally different result. Also, only add a touch of yellow to the olive drab to start off with since too much yellow will result in too sharp a highlight. Build up the highlight in successive stages until you are satisfied with the result.

When highlighting I tend to work in a similar fashion to the basecoat but with more emphasis on the angles of the model. I also apply paint to a far smaller area of the model than when I basecoat. Again, the effect that you want to achieve is that of 'feathering' where one shade of color blends almost seamlessly into the next.

Once I had finished the highlighting I then painted a unit ID number on both sides of the rear hull. I am not a good painter of detail such as this and in particular, not a good painter of numbers! If you have the time and inclination, then I would suggest that you use or create a stencil for the numbering in order to achieve that particularly 'military' look of the numbers. Purists might argue that ID numbers were rarely left so clearly marked in the field but this is a wargaming model and I want to know which vehicles are which!

Looking at pictures of ACAVs and M113s they all have markings on the hull sides at the front of the vehicle and I applied these markings in simple strokes making no attempt to write them out literally but merely to suggest their presence.

At this stage I consider the vehicle almost finished in terms of the basic painting process. All that remains now is to add details such as stowage and so forth and then to apply the effects of weathering.

A roll of anti-RPG fencing was added to the front of the model. I used thin aluminium mesh for this which, in the UK, is available from shops that sell parts and accessories for cars - it is car body repair mesh. A strip of this was simply rolled up, sprayed black and then dry-brushed with gun-metal.

Practically every picture I have of ACAVs shows 'C-rat' packs stowed somewhere on the vehicle so I decided to add some of these. For this I used balsa wood cut into the familiar oblong shape of the c-rat case and then glued them into place. These were painted a light sand colour.

Painting the Crew

The crew figures were painted in exactly the same manner as I paint standard 15mm US Infantry figures. The fact that only the top half of the M-60 gunners is going to be visible did not stop me from painting the whole figure - this was done since, in my opinion, at this scale it is easier to paint the whole figure than to try painting just half of it.

Note that the commander and driver wear vehicle helmets and that these are a distinctly different color than that of the standard infantry helmet. I used Vallejo US Olive Drab (889) to paint the vehicle crew helmets. Similarly, I used this color to paint the flak jackets of the M-60 gunners.

Once the crew figures were completed I glued them into place.

Since this vehicle is intended to be the infantry track of my Armored Cavalry Platoon, I also added some seated infantry figures. These were painted in the same manner as the crew. The figures themselves are from the Peter Pig helicopter crew pack.

It would be nice to see peter Pig produce a stowage pack as well as a vehicle passenger pack.

Basing & Finishing

I cut a base for the model from good quality picture framing card (called 'mounting board here in the UK) measuring approximately 1½ x 2½ inches. The base itself was constructed in the same manner as the infantry bases although I did not add any foliage until after the model had been attached to the base itself using a contact adhesive.

To finish the model I added a couple of radio antennae. These are made using the simple expedient of melting a piece of plastic sprue and gradually drawing the sprue out as it melts to produce a long, thin aerial which is then cut to size. The aerial was glued in place and painted black.

Finally, once everything was done, I varnished the completed model using an acrylic matt spray varnish.